David Black

“I think that if you look at the stats provided above, they’re probably taking things just a teeny bit too far to start calling themselves the UK’s number one quality newspaper website. On any front.”

“I’ve held off from mentioning the poster campaign by the Telegraph group which lays claim to Telegraph.co.uk being “Britain’s number one quality newspaper website” when, plainly, it is not.”

“Traffic to newspaper web sites – 60% male and 40% female – grew by 9%, while traffic to newspaper blogs grew by 210%. Male traffic to blogs grew by 226% Year over Year in December, while female traffic to blogs grew by 183%.”

“The Digital Edge Award winners for this year were announced. Congratulations to Steve Yelvington for winning the Online Innovator Award.”

“Downloads of television programmes and films from websites are expected to grow 10-fold to be worth $6.3bn in 2012, although some content companies have not learned from the music industry’s experiences with internet piracy, says a report.”

$12.8 million financing round led by Bessemer and the European Founders Fund. Total financing to date now more than $26 million. £10m revenue in 2006. valuation rumored to be around $250 million.

“If you expect to get real value from your initiative, though, you must think hard and in advance about exactly what function you want the network to perform.”

Noras headlines.

“I loved the use of a Google map to pinpoint the stories in the area.”

“Here are the top news sites in the U.S. for December 2006 according to Nielsen//NetRatings.”

“The web has put a premium on short-form content, both because it’s easier to read in the ADD style that today’s interrupt-driven technology is driving us towards, and because it’s easier to build collaboratively.”

“Backfence can come across as a brand attempting to be a town. Each site looks the same, maintaining the Backfence brand throughout all of the properties”

“According to Comscore, US monthly uniques for Gawker sites combined went from 1.6m in December 2005 to 3.7m visitors in December 2006. “

“Deutsche Bank has a lot to say on the subject. ‘Characteristics of small markets that contribute to the small market/large market divergence include less competitive market dynamics, less exposure to national advertising, better circulation and a lower e

“Nielsen//NetRatings Announces December U.S. Search Share Rankings.”

“YouTube CEO Chad Hurley said today his company (now owned by Google) ‘is going to move in [the] direction’ of rewarding video creators for their content, as part of a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.”

“RTL news director says that free newspapers are not the way of the future after the Netherlands’ third free daily newspaper is launched… the mobile telephone would instead become the main vehicle for news.”

“Intel’s advance was in part in finding a new insulator composed of an alloy of hafnium, a metallic element that has previously been used in filaments and electrodes and as a neutron absorber in nuclear power plants.”

“Trinity Mirror has launched five citizen journalism micro-sites as a taster of what could become commonplace across the group’s news websites.”

Video of Craig Newmark Q&A. “Media Threat or Robin Hood of the new millennium? take your pick. But one thing is for sure: his spirit of people’s interaction and extremely modest capitalism is a powerful and arguably unprecedented force in the media worl

“Newmark infers that charging was the only solution to this problem of bad ads and pressure to post for brokers. I disagree. Sounds more like a lack of imagination. And the folks in the audience seemed to pick up on it.”

“This vision is unfulfilled. The website´s own research demonstrates that latimes.com is virtually invisible in greater Los Angeles. By some measures, the site is losing traction even faster than the newspaper.”

Round up of business school podcasts

“In the absence of any British, European or ANSI Standard… for this important but poorly-specified reference item, it was decided to conduct an independent assessment of exactly how much use one of them was.”

“Pre-rolls are a questionable monetization system for YouTube like web video. But keeping them to three seconds is certainly an interesting idea.”

“According to ABC Electronic, which audits website figures, The Guardian had 13.8m unique users in December 2006 compared with The Daily Telegraph’s 6.4m. However, the figures do not show how many users were UK-based.”

“Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back successes, kill failures, fast.”

“The big newsroom story of 2006 was the transformation at The Telegraph in the UK – the layout, the building and most importantly, attitude.”

“Recently though it has once again become interesting with the launch of new attention services from Google e.g Google Reader Trends and Google Bookmark and Search History”

“MySpace was just the start. Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants are betting big on the Internet.”

“Newspapers should be convening and facilitating community conversation, working to build a stronger civic process with broader participation. Drupal naturally presents itself as a tool in this space,” said Yelvington.

“Detroit automakers slashed spending with Time Inc. a total of more than $100 million last year. General Motors, formerly Time Inc.’s biggest advertiser, cut its spending by 29%, or $47.8 million, according to estimates by TNS Media Intelligence.”

“By the time today’s youth reach the age when they would normally become regular newspaper readers they will have been exposed to a totally different media experience.”

“Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) boosted revenue by 13 percent in 4Q06 to $1.7 billion from $1.5 billion in the same period last year but it doesn’t show in the bottom line.”

“All good, right? For people creating content. Absolutely. For the end user, not so much… There are multiple problems with P2P systems that could kill the golden goose.”

New version

Some excerpts from the winter issue of the Neiman Reports on journalism in the age of the web.

“They opted to roll out a journalistic user experience just about as social as the local paper sitting in a puddle of water in your driveway… The world is full of people, but Backfence is full of disembodied stories.”

“BitTorrent has done for epic television what Dances with Wolves did for epic films – in this instance a tech-driven, rather than culture-driven, return to a richer, longer form.”

“The Web 2.0 ‘bubble’ – where a thousand ventures can bloom and thrive – is starting to pop. In the last few weeks the number of startups to go belly up or teter on the brink has increased.”

“The BBC is in advanced negotiations with Google to make programming available via a branded channel on the search giant’s video-sharing site, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal.”

“However, there is evidence that certain aspects of the proposals may have a negative effect on investment in similar commercial services which would not be in the long-term public interest.”

“The group, which owns the Financial Times and Penguin and is the world’s largest educational publisher, said it had continued to perform strongly through the fourth quarter of 2006, with all its businesses trading well.”

“A range of the BBC’s proposed on-demand services, including the iPlayer, will have a ‘negative effect on investment in similar commercial services’, according to Ofcom’s first-ever market impact assessment of a new service from the Corporation.”

“This year could bear witness to some grave e-business casualties if too many jump into the social networking sector gung ho, according to Ecademy.”

“The idea that the future is local news is getting a lot of play in the papers today.”

“Every journalist working on a Northcliffe newspaper is to be trained to update its accompanying website, putting stories online themselves and learning how to add value to articles.”

“No one wants to connect with your brand, they want to connect with their town… Hint: If your hyperlocal site makes me think ‘Hmm, maybe we’ll move back there someday,’ you’re probably doing something right.”

“Media analysts agree that many readers are looking for hyperlocal content, but they say most citizen-journalism sites aren’t mature enough to tap into the lucrative local advertising markets.”

“Does BBC reach extend with every development of the technology (because it must serve all Britons in every way)? Or are there frontiers it mustn’t pass?”

“Users depend on TechMeme and Digg to show them interesting content that they never would have thought would be interesting to them — it’s the power of serendipity and discovery that comes when you ride along with a larger community of interest.”

“Oodle, the listings aggregator service, is completing its transition from a Google –dependent site with the rollout today of a comparison feature for autos.”

“In response to a question on the Placeblogger listserv, I put together a quick list of sites that are great for journalism tutorials (particularly free ones). Here’s the list.”

“In this issue, words about journalists’ experiences in the digital era transport our vision forward, while our eye takes us on a visual voyage back to a time when newspapers wove communities together.”

“UK newspaper and magazine publishers have agreed to allow the Press Complaints Commission to regulate audio-visual material on their websites.”

“After taking action against Microsoft and Google, Belgium’s French-speaking newspapers are seeking redress from another Internet search engine, Yahoo, their lawyer has said.”

“Archant, the owner of the Buchan Observer, Fraserburgh Herald and Ellon Times titles, has sold them to Johnston Press.”

“I am honestly mystified that people can effectively claim (HuffPo) this sort of unsubstantiated editorial guesswork is ethical but accurate measurement of a writer’s draw is not.”

“AOL is closing down a slew of smaller blogs it bought from entrepreneur-provocateur and Valleywag staple, Jason Calacanis, in 2005.”

“The number of people reading Internet blogs on the top 10 U.S. newspaper sites more than tripled in December from a year ago and accounted for a larger percentage of overall traffic to those sites, according to data released on Wednesday.”

“Still, possibly the real problem with folksonomies in not their chaotic tags but that they are trying to serve two masters at once; the personal collection, and the collective collection. Is it possible to have the best of both worlds?”

Ze Frank plans to go to Hollywood when he finishes The Show.

“The European Journalism Training Association has released a handbook aimed at those training journalists to work in multiple mediums.”

On My New York Times etc: “None of them are pretty or engaging. None of them provide a community filter that makes information relevant and interesting. They lose the editorial voice of their parent. They’re too hard to setup. And they just aren’t coo

“Here are the top news sites in the U.S. for November 2006 according to Nielsen//NetRatings.”

“The BBC has launched a citizen journalism project to explore new multimedia story telling ideas using mobile phones and GPS.”

“The BBC is set to recruit dozens of advertising executives as it looks to bolster its website income. The corporation is close to approving a plan under which advertising will be sold on its websites that can be viewed by those living outside the UK.”

“Linda Grant, AN Marketing Services director, has appointed Palmer as head of CRM and Sally Wolfenden-Gull as CRM manager.”

“An effective low-end competitor pushes the original business to focus on the high-end market. For newspapers, that means focusing on large advertisers and rich readers.”